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Acheese knife is a type ofkitchen knife specialized for the cutting ofcheese. Different cheeses require different knives, according primarily to hardness. There are also a number of other kitchen tools designed for cutting or slicing cheese, especially the harder types. These include thecheese cutter,cheese slicer,cheese plane,cheese scoop for soft cheese and others, collectively known ascheese servers.[1]
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Soft cheese knives are designed to deal with thestickiness of soft cheese. When the cheese does not stick to the blade, it allows for pieces of cheese to be presented more attractively, with crisper shapes compared to cheese cut with standard knives.
The blades of cheese knives are usually made of a material such asstainless steel, which is resistant to the stickiness of cheese. Another design feature often found is the presence of holes in the blade to help to prevent the cheese from sticking to it. Some soft cheese knives also include a ridge, which runs vertically near the top of the blade. This helps separate the cheese as it is being sliced. Some cheese knives have a forked end, used for serving slices of cheese.
Most ordinary knives have a blade that is wide at the base and tapers to the tip. A cheese knife, on the other hand, may look similar to acleaver in that it starts out thinner at the handle and then gets wider away from the base. Some cheese knives have angled handles to make an easier cut.
The non-sticky characteristics of a cheese knife also make them useful for cutting other sticky foods, such as cakes, eggs, and pies; compare alsoegg slicer.
Hard cheeses require a tough blade, which will not be damaged by the hard cheese. Exemplary is the distinctiveParmesan cheese knife, which is short, thick, and stubby, like anoyster knife.
Another popular design is that of a large off-set straight blade with handles on both ends - either parallel in line, but raised above, or at 90 degrees - so that a great amount of pressure may be applied.
Various non-knife devices are used for cutting cheese, such as a cheese wire, which completely avoids adhesion, a cheese slicer, used primarily for thin slices of medium-hard cheeses, used especially inScandinavia andThe Netherlands for cutting cheese for sandwiches, and thegirolle, used to cut the hardTête de Moine cheese by scraping.
A cheese slicer is used usually to cut semi-hard and hard cheeses likeEdam cheese andbrunost. It produces thin, even slices. There are different styles of cheese slicers, designed for cheeses of varying hardness.
Ostehøvel, a modern cheese slicer or cheese plane, was invented byThor Bjørklund in 1925 in Norway.[2] Mass production of theostehøvel started during 1927 inLillehammer, Norway. He also tried to make a butter slicer (smørehøvel) built on the same general design, this idea was however scrapped after first prototype. The design was based on thecarpenter's plane. This style of slicer is very common in the Nordic countries, and in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Brazil.[3][4][5]
Cheese cutters are designed to cut soft, sticky cheeses (moist and oily), and accordingly do not have a large sharp-edged blade; compare to a cheese knife with holes in the blade. The cutting edge of cheese cutters are typically a finegaugestainless steel oraluminium wire (a "cheesewire") stretched across a supporting frame. The thin wire cuts through a cheese block with hand pressure.[6]
The original Prodyne Gourmet Cheese Slicer had a wooden board with a slot cut into it and a hole through which one end of a U-shaped steel cutting arm was inserted. In the patented design, a stainless steelwire extends between the two ends of the cutting arm fit into the slot, and cuts the cheese. The wire has loops at each end; one loop is around the steel cutting arm in the slot, while the other passes around a metal pin through a plastic handle on the other end of the cutting arm. The plastic handle rotates upward to tighten the wire, and is secured to the cutting arm with a screw.
The board-style cheese slicer has been expanded to includemarble,stainless steel, and plastic cutting boards. Several other designs of handles and wire holders have also been invented to hold the cutting wires of cheese slicing boards. Many of these wires have loops on the ends like the Prodyne models; others have small rings or knots that fit into a slot on the handle and cutting arm.
The girolle is a utensil for scrapingTête de MoineSwiss cheese into the form of rosettes that resemblechanterelle mushrooms (also known asgirolle in French, hence the name of the device). This cheese was traditionally scraped with a knife. Thegirolle was invented in 1982 by Nicolas Crevoisier of theSwiss Jura and is produced by the Métafil-laGirolle company.[7]
The cheese plane is a stationary variant of acarpenter's plane, very similar to akitchen mandolin slicer. It is used for cutting extra-hardBerner Alpkäse that has been aged for at least two years, also known asHobelkäse (plane cheese).
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The cheese scoop is used for softer or crumblier cheeses. It has a short curved blade with a long handle, creating an appearance of a tiny (6–8 inches or 15–20 cm long)garden trowel.
Particularly, it is used in a manner similar to both aspade for digging into the heavily veined central section of amedium-hard, but crumblyStilton cheesetruckle orwheel and then as aspoon for scooping the crumbled pieces - traditionally puddled with a splash or two ofport, or a similar sweetfortified wine.
At a push, it can also be used to scoop outGouda orEdam from their wax covers. The old version may have a built-in scraper, to push the cheese off the scoop, similar to the one in anice cream scoop.[1]
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